Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Seed, Gundam Seed Destiny, any of the characters, shoes, or love!

Enjoy the revised first chapter.

Chapter 1: To love and Shoes

To realise that you have fallen in love is almost like riding a roller coaster. Backwards. The mixture of happiness, excitement, anxiety, fear, yearning and horror are enough to turn any man's head.

But not this man's.

Definitely not. He was calm, collected and brave; a soldier and a warrior. He could face such a simple task as this, because, after all, how hard could it be compared to fighting a war? If he could live through that, then he could muster up the courage for something like this.

"Athrun? Hey, you've been standing there for a while now. Snap out of it!" Kira nudged his friend worriedly. Of the 15 minutes they'd been standing outside Cagalli's mansion, Athrun had been silent for the most part, not talking, not moving; heck, Kira couldn't even tell if the man was breathing or not! Frankly, it was really beginning to freak him out. He let out a sigh of relief as Athrun turned his head to face him.

"Oh I'm sorry, I was…thinking."

"I believe the word you're actually looking for is 'panicking'." Kira said, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow in concern for his friend. What he'd first considered to be an amusing show of fear had slowly turned into a quarter of an hours' worth of terror that was beginning to concern him. Athrun laughed and shook his head, berating himself for worrying Kira over such a silly matter in the first place,

"Of course I'm not panicking Kira, I could go in there right now if I wanted!" He puffed out his chest, as if to prove to that he wasn't worried, and so Kira shouldn't worry either.

Although, if he was being really honest…

He was panicking like hell!

He really hadn't known what all the fuss was about until now. When other boys had come back and told him all about their horrible experiences, he had always said the same thing:

"All you had to do was say 'I love you' how hard could that be?!"

But as he stood on Cagalli's doorstep, dressed in a white dress shirt, black trousers and clutching a bouquet of red roses, he'd found that, actually, it was very hard indeed. How those tales haunted him now.

This was the hardest thing he'd had to do in a very long time. He wanted to run away, but he was currently too afraid to move more than his head, and even that came with a big risk of falling over. Although now he was concentrating, Kira didn't seem to be where he was before…

"Athrun? I'm ringing the doorbell right now!"

His whole body whipped to face the door of the mansion, just in time to see Kira heading up the stone steps.

'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!' His inner self screamed as his outer self tried to compose itself. His inner self was running almost in slow motion towards Kira, ready to tackle him to the ground, whilst his out self stood gaping, frozen in shock. Could he tell Kira he wanted to go home and try again another day, or would that make it even worse the next time he plucked up the courage to wear these clothes and hold these flowers? Would Kira let him walk away? If he ran now would Kira be able to catch up?

"Oh wait, Kira-" His outer self began to speak, but it was too late.

Kira quickly pressed the doorbell button and dived behind a nearby bush, miming a thumbs up before submerging completely from view.

"Coming!" A voice yelled from inside.

Athrun's poor, love struck heart nearly exploded. He'd had a whole speech planned out not moments ago, but it had all fled his mind leaving just one word in its place.

SHIT!

It was now or never. As he heard footsteps approaching the door, he tried to calm himself down. He had promised himself that he wouldn't do what the other men had done in all their stories. He would not try to cover himself by saying something completely ridicules like 'I love your shoes'.

The door opened and Cagalli appeared, freshly dressed and faintly glowing. He took a deep breath, thrust the roses at her and spoke.

"Cagalli…"

She gasped, blushing as she took the flowers.

"I love…"

Come on! Just say it!

"…Your shoes!"

DAMN IT MAN!

I hope you enjoyed the REVISED first chapter of this mismatch collection of one shots. Read and Review beautiful Fanfictioners!